Government will take a firm line against white ratepayers who refuse to pay for government services they consider below par, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka warned this week.
Shiceka said about 280 ratepayers’ organisations, mainly in the North West and the Free State, are diverting payments into a trust fund in protest against declining service standards.
Shiceka promised to engage them next month “to bring them on board and find solutions”. But if they did not back down, government would take legal action.
The dissident group is said be based in Sannieshof in North West and Kroonstad in the Free State.
Shiceka told journalists in Parliament that he would amend the Municipal Finances Management Act and the Municipal Systems Act to ensure that municipal managers were free to do their work, rather than spend most of their time in meetings. Top municipal officials had to account 220 times a year in different structures.
In an interview Shiceka also revealed that the government is preparing to ban contractors who provide shoddy service to the government or fail to complete work.
“The tender system has to be transparent to deal with abuse. At the moment officials give work to companies that have no capacity to deliver what is expected, so that the companies can benefit the officials who awarded the tenders.”
He said that ward committees would have to sign off on projects before they started and after they were finished as a condition for payment.